Month: March 2012

In a world where we’ve never been so aware of being watched, everyone wants to “look busy”. Actions are good for that. Actions help everyone look like they’re working hard to get to the answers. And along the way it’s very easy to believe you are doing things right, and therefore you have a strategy, when in fact you are simply part of what the market’s doing. If the market’s growing, it’s not a strategy to be there for the ride. A lot of companies told a lot of people over the last decade that they had sound strategies proven over time. They didn’t have a strategy at all. They had actions that had kept them busy over time, and those actions were successful as long as the market rose. The key action was to acquire and revalue assets upwards, and then tell themselves and their shareholders that they were creating wealth. The answers are not the actions. And plenty of actions don’t necessarily generate the answers. And yet there’s unswerving faith in many quarters …

Somehow, it just doesn’t feel right. In fact, to some it feels tantamount to suicidal – spending money on your brand at the very point in time when the company feels like it can least afford to invest in “intangibles”. To all those people who’ve thrown that argument at me over the years, you’re right. Well, partly. At the “wrong” time, it absolutely doesn’t feel right. But that’s the thing about counter-cyclical decisions. They’re out of sync with the spirit of the times – or more particularly, they’re not aligned with your spirit at the time. And, actually, if you’re honest, the feeling that you have about the futility of branding in bad times is probably the same feeling you have when things are going well. Except then it feels like you don’t need to spend money on your brand. Whenever anyone asks me, “When’s the right time to spend money on your branding?”, I respond with, “When’s the right time to be competitive?”. I’m not being a smart-ass. There’s never a wrong time. So …

Brands and customers part company for all sorts of reasons. Relationships are tidal. We outgrow the need for a brand or product, our tastes or priorities shift, we don’t live where we lived or work where we worked or spend our time doing what we used to do all the time, perhaps we decide to pass on the latest upgrade. And, objectively, that’s a healthy thing. Those ebbs and flows provide markets with movement. They ensure that new players can enter and gain new customers and current players can change their position in a sector as they gain or lose followers. Wish them well Most brands have their heads around winning new customers. They seem less certain on how to say goodbye with good grace. But how you do that can, in the longer run, and in the context of your brand, be as important as how you welcome customers in the first place. Wishing them well on the next stage of their journey, and assisting them to start that stage in the best light, …

It’s extraordinary how so much has been made of the emergence of China and India and of the impact of new technology on the world’s economic wellbeing – and yet a factor bigger than either of these dynamics has been largely ignored. The rise in the participation of women in the economy through full-time work – an economic force I refer to as “femonomics” – has contributed more to economic growth than either Asia or online globally, and yet the attention this has received pales in comparison to the space devoted to Silicon Valley and the rise of the subcontinent and the Red Dragon. In the US, the input of women in the paid workforce has risen from just 20 percent in the early 20th century to close to 50 percent today, and it is still rising. According to Gerry Myers, American women now earn, control, and spend trillions of dollars annually. In fact, they are responsible for a whopping 80 – 85 percent of all purchasing decisions. So it’s amazing that so many marketers …

I’m continually fascinated by how much companies ignore context. And the irony of that of course is that this is happening at the very time when we have more access to information than ever before. Ask many companies what they are doing and they will happily tell you. Ask them what they are doing to be more competitive and the answer you get back rarely makes mention of those competitors and why a brand’s actions will stand them apart. It’s easier to act than to distinctualise. And that’s because actions feel like something is happening. Managers monitor their operational improvements, and believe they are future-proofing the business, maybe even outperforming their competitors. But just as quickly as they are improving their actions and becoming more efficient, their competitors are doing the same. In equally splendid isolation. So there’s this strange dichotomy of awareness. Everyone knows how to keep up. But not how to overtake. Continuous improvement is now a hygiene factor in so many industries. Everyone is acting to stay steady with those around them. …

Just over six years ago, I wrote a post about the futility of pilot announcements. In it, I asked: “Why do pilots always insist on giving us details of the flight plan and our intended altitude? Because, to be perfectly honest, I don’t really care how high we’re flying or the course we’re taking – just as long as we get there. I just need to know they’re present and correct, and in an appropriate state of body and mind to do their job. And besides I have no way of knowing whether it really is 27,000 feet or not, so what’s the point in telling me? …” Every brand would like to tell their audience more about what they do. They like to think that explaining in detail how hard they work and how much they know quantifies the value they add. But what it really amounts to is the brand having a “conversation” with its customers on terms it feels comfortable with. It’s smalltalk, disguised as information. The pilots probably aren’t iinterested. They …

Imagine being flashmobbed. Suddenly hundreds of people run into your reception area with chocolates and flowers and sing a song in your honour. What would you do? Or a crowd appears at your company’s gate and each person there shakes their fist and jeers everyone entering the building. Then, just as quickly, they’re gone. It happens a lot. To firms all over the world. Not literally of course. On Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube. Brands are hit by a wave of emotion, good or bad, that rolls in, and then recedes, leaving everyone affected breathless and confused. What the hell just happened? The force at work is “critical mass”: the impact that many, many people can have when moving together, with purpose, towards a singular point. It can last minutes, hours, days. It can generate smiles and business, or scandal and significant losses. It can transform people and brands into heroes or villains, celebrities or scandals. Whilst I think a lot of us continue to search for a credible return on investment model for brands …

Does the passion and commitment that fans feel for their favourite sports and events carry across to the sponsors who often help make such events financially feasible? Previously I’ve examined how advertisers have woven their participation into the very fabric of Superbowl Sunday and contrasted the sentiments that such engagement enjoys with other sponsorship arrangements where brands are much more sidelined. I’ve also looked at Dow’s involvement with the upcoming London Olympics. Now Kirk Wakefield, Professor of Retail Marketing at Baylor University in Texas and Anne Rivers, Senior Vice President at Brand Asset Consulting in New York, have studied the relationship between brands and fans more closely by looking at the effect of official sponsorship on key aspects of the brand relationship Using key sponsors from the NFL, they’ve looked at what role sponsorship plays in brands achieving knowledge (how well the brand is understood), esteem (how well regarded the brand is) relevance (how appropriate the brand is seen to be), and differentiation (how distinctive the brand is in its point of view from competitors) …

Blair sent me this great story about harnessing the power of habit from NPR. It includes an explanation by business reporter Charles Duhigg from his upcoming book “The Power Of Habit” of how companies have successfully altered people’s habits by tapping into what the author refers to as the “habit loop.” According to Duhigg, this loop has three parts: the cue, which triggers a behaviour; the routine, which is the behaviour itself of course; and the reward, which is the signal that goes to the brain to store this habit for future use or not. Duhigg also talks about when Paul O’Neill took over as CEO of a dysfunctional Alcoa. By focusing on worker safety and the dangers of inefficient manufacturing to workers, O’Neill found a way to get everyone on the same page. He went on to build a highly profitable and efficient company. The story serves as a reminder that a change in culture only takes place when you achieve a change in mindset; when you break what Duhigg calls a “keystone habit”. …